This may be the single greatest aviation story ever told, it’s about the iconic SR-71 Blackbird whose full operating specs are still classified to this day. The story, from the now out-of-print book Sled Driver by former SR-71 jockey Brian Shul (available used on Amazon for just $700). Here’s the ultimate aviation troll: There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun...

Then disaster struck. On May 24, an A-12 stalled, went into an unrecoverable spin and crashed during a test flight in Utah. Fortunately, pilot Kenneth Collins ejected and survived. Even in remote Utah, it’s hard to hide a crash. A local deputy witnessed the incident and a vacationing family snapped away with a camera. The CIA promptly seized their photographs and paid $25,000 each to the deputy and the family to keep quiet, according to a 2010 story in the Seattle Times. The Blackbird wouldn’t stay officially secret for much longer. Pres. Lyndon Johnson would run for election in 1964,...

For 40 years it has been the fastest plane ever built, and now the crew who flew the record-breaking, speed-shattering mission have been reunited with the aircraft they once commanded, and climbed back into the cockpit. It was 1976 when U.S. Air Force pilot Maj. Gen. Eldon 'Al' Joersz and Lt. Col. George 'GT' Morgan flew a jet faster than a speeding bullet. They flew faster than anyone had done before, or since. On July 28, 1976, the two men flew a SR-71 Blackbird spy plane for more than a thousand kilometers at 2,193 miles per hour, covering one mile...

Airbus Group chief executive Tom Enders took the controls of the two-seat Perlan II glider during a 10min test flight on 7 May from the windswept, high-desert airport in Minden, Nevada, raising the public profile of a volunteer team of aviation adventurers hoping to make history in about four months. Afterwards, Enders – a licensed helicopter pilot and skydiving enthusiast – pronounced the Airbus-sponsored composite vehicle ready to achieve the Perlan team’s goal of shattering the winged altitude record of 85,069ft set by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in 1976, using a unique and barely understood weather phenomenon instead of afterburning...

Tired of politics? Set aside some time, get a glass of what you like and settle in. Brian Shul is the real McCoy. He crashed at the end of the Vietnam War in Cambodia, with very little chance of survival... and beat the odds. He is funny and informative; he did it and lived to tell the story. There are very few around like him. There are good public speakers, and then there's Brian Shul. He talks about life's choices and outcomes, but laced within his message are incredible stories of his years as an SR71 Blackbird pilot. The SR...

On December 22nd, 1964, the SR-71 Blackbird took to the air for the very first time, rising above Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale with F-104 chase planes in pursuit. The occasion would mark the birth of one of the most amazing and renowned aircraft of all time. Some numbers from the Blackbird family of planes: 35 miles per minute or 3,100 feet per second is how fast the SR-71 could fly 85,000 feet is the official Blackbird ceiling, although it supposedly could fly higher Snip Over 1,000 missiles were launched at the SR-71 without any losses Snip Zero was...

Make sure to scroll down to the end of the article to view the numerous photographs of the SR-71. After a Soviet surface-to-air missile battery showdown with a USAF U-2 spy plane near the closed city of Sverdlovsk in 1960, the US government realised they needed a reconnaissance plane that could fly even higher – and outrun any missile and fighter launched against it. The answer was the SR-71 Blackbird. It was closer to a spaceship than an aircraft, made of titanium to withstand the enormous temperatures from flying at 2,200mph (3,540kph). Its futuristic profile made it difficult to detect...

Built and designed in the 1960s after the A-12 Oxcart, the SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest, most vanguardist air-breathing airplane in the history of aviation. These once classified photos reveal how Lockheed built both birds in secret, in California. They look taken at the Rebel base in Hoth. "Everything had to be invented" The A-12 and the SR-71 were a completely different design from anything else before it—and everything after, as time has demonstrated. At the time, many of the technologies needed to make these airplanes were considered "impossible." And yet, thanks to Kelly Johnson and the amazing team...

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the SR-71 Blackbird, the Air Force’s sleek, high-flying Cold War reconnaissance workhorse that still holds several world air-speed records. Here’s a look back at the amazing aircraft.

ARLINGTON, Va. — On a September day in 1974, Capt. Harold "Buck" Adams set the world speed record in the U.S. military's SR-71 Blackbird aircraft. At the controls of the twin-engine supersonic plane, Adams flew from London to Los Angeles in a blistering 3 hours, 47 minutes and 39 seconds. The Cold War was in full swing, and "there was a need for an airplane that could penetrate Soviet airspace with impunity," Adams, a retired brigadier general for the U.S. Air Force, told an audience July 18 here at a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) expo showcasing the Pentagon's...

The drone that spied on bin Laden and on Iran's nukes was just the start. Meet its bigger, higher-flying, stealthier cousin, the Northrop Grumman RQ-180. It's probably been flying for a few years now, but you weren't supposed to know that; the existence of this secret project, based out of Area 51, was revealed Friday by Aviation Week. The existence of the RQ-180 has been long rumored. Cryptic public statements by U.S. Air Force officials indicated a secret high-altitude reconnaissance drone, and Northrop officials frequently reference the broad strokes of the program. For that matter, it is likely not the...

Until Lockheed Martin finally builds the SR-72 Mach-6 spy plane it announced in November, the iconic SR-71 Blackbird, capable of flying three times the speed of sound, remains the fastest warplane ever flown operationally. So fast that no missiles fired at it had a chance of hitting. When the U-2 spy plane was built in the 1950s, its designer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson already knew that it would be vulnerable to enemy defenses.

-excerpt- Lockheed Martin has unveiled plans for a hypersonic spy plane that could fly at Mach 6, twice as fast as its famed SR-71 Blackbird, and said a missile demonstrating the new technology could fly as early as 2018.

Aviation Week's Guy Norris has an exclusive article on the successor for the Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird, the legendary spy plane that may be the favorite of every airplane nerd in the world. The hypersonic SR-72 is the first aircraft that can fit perfectly in Star Wars or Galactica, a true space age ship.

"It is a race this jet will not let us lose. The Mach eases to 3.5 as we crest 80,000 feet. We are a bullet now - except faster. We hit the turn, and I feel some relief as our nose swings away from a country we have seen quite enough of. Screaming past Tripoli , our phenomenal speed continues to rise, and the screaming Sled pummels the enemy one more time, laying down a parting sonic boom. In seconds, we can see nothing but the expansive blue of the Mediterranean . I realize that I still have my left...

A newly declassified CIA history from 20 years ago spills the story about Nevada's Area 51 and its secret mission — which was not to study UFOs, but to test the U-2 and other spy planes. The CIA's story about the legendary test site is contained in "The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: the U-2 and Oxcart Programs." The document was approved for release in June, with just a few remaining redactions, in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by George Washington University's National Security Archive back in 2005.

SR-71 Blackbird: The Cold War's ultimate spy plane Colonel Rich Graham spent 15 years as a Blackbird pilot and wing commander. He told BBC Future some of his incredible stories about the world's fastest plane. After a Soviet surface-to-air missile battery showdown with a USAF U-2 spy plane near the closed city of Sverdlovsk in 1960, the US government realised they needed a reconnaissance plane that could fly even higher – and outrun any missile and fighter launched against it. The answer was the SR-71 Blackbird. It was closer to a spaceship than an aircraft, made of titanium to withstand...